Love Is In The Air

It’s February 1, and now that we’ve turned the page on this new month it’s time to go ahead and face facts:

Love is in the air.

I used to think Valentine’s Day (and all the hullabaloo that goes with it) was just a holiday manufactured by card and gift stores to get us all back to spending money for gifts while we’re still recovering from our big Christmas spend, and hey- maybe that’s still true.

But my attitude about Valentine’s Day has changed just a tad as they years have passed. First of all, I got married on Valentine’s Day. (More on that another time. It wasn’t for the lovey-dovey reasons you may think, but now that it’s our Anniversary, I do actually love it!) Second, the whole world wears pink and red on repeat. (Can we make this a think not JUST for February?!?) Third, can you even handle all the sweets and treats there are to tempt us this month? Be still my candy-loving heart.

Valentine’s Day is a celebration of L-O-V-E, but don’t get bogged down thinking it’s only for people who have a life parter, significant other, or spouse. This month, let’s celebrate our Girlfriends (Galentines Day, anyone?) Let’s celebrate all the love we’ve learned from over the years (Throw a “Stupid Cupid” Party!) And while we’re at it- how about let’s celebrate learning to love ourselves as we are just a little bit more.

There are a LOT of things to love, and to celebrate all that love floating around, I’ve put together another Spotify playlist for you. This one’s got 2 hours of my favorite love songs. You can get to the playlist by clicking here.

I’d love to hear from you- Did I leave out your favorite love song?

Potato Salad Recipe

I grew up in a family that went to A LOT of church covered-dish dinners. On top of that, we celebrated EV-ER-Y thing with some sort of dinner. My grandma would make WAY too much food (because that’s what you do) and we’d spend a lot of time around the table with friends and family telling the same jokes and stories. I loved each of those times! Potato salad was at ALL of those covered dish dinners at church, and was always on the table at her house. In fact, the very first post I made on this blog was rooted in a realization I had last summer about a connection to my Grandma I made while I was making this very recipe for family and friends here at home.

So what’s so special about a silly potato salad? Honestly- I have no idea. It just takes like home; that’s all I can say. The recipe I’m sharing below is based on what my Grandma taught me, and has been doctored through the years as I’ve experimented with other things to achieve the ‘tangy’ taste hers used to have. (I’m not convinced she didn’t leave a couple of these ingredients out when she first gave me the recipe. It would’ve been like her to leave me a little something to figure out.)

There are a lot of ingredients here, but I promise you- each has a special role in making this potato salad so good you’ll be the hero of anyone who tries it.

Ingredients:

• 5 lbs Yukon gold potatoes

• 1 tablespoon table salt

• 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp Duke’s mayonnaise (Don’t play. Get you some Duke’s.)

• 1 cup of sweet pickle cubes (be sure to drain the pickle juice from them)

chopped red onion (start with 1/2 cup- but I almost always end up using more like 3/4 cup for texture)

• chopped celery (again- start with 1/2 cup)

• chopped green bell pepper (guess what…start with 1/2 cup)

• 1/2 cup chopped parsley (use flat leaf)

• 1/4 cup yellow mustard

• 1 jar (4 oz) of diced pimentos

• 2 Tablespoons of seasoned rice wine vinegar (check the asian food area of the grocer if you can’t find this with the other vinegars)

• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice

• 1 Tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

• 1-2 tsp of celery salt (start with 1 and you can add more if you need to once everything is mixed together)

• 4 drops of hot sauce (I like Red Clay…and typically end up using more like 6-8 dashes)

• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika

Optional Ingredients: hard boiled eggs (I don’t like eggs, so I never add them) 1-2 jalapeño peppers chopped.

Preparation:

While you’re potatoes are boiling, chop your onion, celery, and bell pepper. Combine into a large bowl (big enough to mix everything together) (If you chose to add egg and/or jalapeño peppers, you can add them into the mixture with the chopped veggies.)

Add mayo, mustard, pimentos, pickle cubes, olive oil, lemon juice, hot sauce, seasoned rice wine vinegar, celery salt and smoked paprika to the copped veggies and stir together.

When potatoes have finished boiling/cooling down, cube the potatoes into the mixture and stir to coat the potatoes.

add salt and parsley; stir to coat the potato mixture

taste a bite (SMILE) and then add any dashes/touches of ingredients you want to make the potato salad exactly how you or your family like it.

Cover and stir.

This should make enough for 10-12 healthy servings. I recommend making it ahead of time if you can. The more time the ingredients have to ‘get happy’ together, the better this salad becomes.

I hope you enjoy this. If you make it, I’d love to hear what you think!

I Bet You Have Beautiful Handwriting...

That’s one of the first things I hear from someone when I tell them I do calligraphy, and to be honest I can completely understand why that seems like a connection that should be made. While I don’t have terrible handwriting, I do think it’s interesting that my calligraphy or lettering scripts and my actual day-to-day handwriting look almost NOTHING alike.

There are probably a couple of key reasons for that:

Pictured here are just are just a few types of ‘nibs’ used in calligraphy. This picture is also a great illustration of an oblique nib holder as well as a several straight versions. As a left-handed calligrapher, I tend to have a harder time on my strokes when I use the oblique holders. I’m working on learning a new style of calligraphy (Spencerian) which I find is the exception to this rule for me so far.

Tools & Materials

When writing in a formal calligraphy style or doing a hand lettering piece, the tools and materials are VERY different than an everyday pen or pencil with which we typically write. For example, when I write envelopes (or other pieces) for a wedding, I use a calligraphy pen holder and nib that is dipped into a jar of liquid ink. There are different styles of pen holders and nibs; all designed to help the artist (yes, I’m calling myself an artist!) achieve a thickness of lines on both upstrokes and downstrokes. Nibs have different levels of flexibility, which affects how the ink flows onto the writing surface. Did you know there’s even a bit of a science associated with matching the correct nibs, ink and paper/surface to achieve the desired look for each piece? Each tool a calligrapher uses matters, and for me it’s been as much of a learning curve for finding and matching the tools I use as learning the stroke patterns and connections for the letters and words I write.

Calligraphy is not so much writing as it is drawing.

I realized this very quickly when I attended my very first calligraphy workshop in the Laura Hooper Calligraphy Studio in Alexandria, Virginia. In fact, today marks the 3rd anniversary of that fist ‘real’ class! I’d been fascinated with Laura and several other calligraphers on Instagram for ages, and I’d always had a bit of a hand for mimicking the styles I saw them demonstrate online. I tried my hand at placards and envelopes on my own, but taking that first class opened my eyes WIDELY to the beautiful, yet tedious world of calligraphy. Laura taught the basic strokes needed before we went into letters. Her recommendation was to practice those strokes and letters for quite awhile before even attempting to write words. She was right. Learning the basic strokes and practice drills are instrumental in helping your hands and arms learn muscle memory to create the desired effects on the paper as you write. If you don’t have access to a calligraphy instructor with the expertise of Laura, I recommend her online introductory program or hope you’ll find someone who does something similar- with an intense focus on learning the foundations first. Even ole Leo Davinci had to sketch before he painted his masterpieces, right?

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

When I first began learning calligraphy in earnest, I was working for a Bank and was on the road every other week for 5 days at the time. Long story short- I had a LOT of time by myself in a hotel. After those first few classes with Laura, I began packing my calligraphy bag for those trips. (I drove most places so packing inks, nibs, papers etc wasn’t as difficult for me as it would’ve been had I been flying everywhere.) I’d get back to my hotel room after work, grab something to eat, turn on Bravo and sit at the desk writing drills or practicing strokes for hours at the time. Sometimes I’d have to stop because my arm ached! I found calligraphy to be something that calmed my nerves after a stressful day, and I could almost immediately see improvement in what I was doing. Now two years later, calligraphy is a part of a business I’m building for myself with LetterJess. There’s not much I love more than writing an order of envelopes for a wedding or party. Am I a master penman yet? NO. I am still learning- and still loving the journey.
I still practice; and I don’t count writing the envelopes for an order as practice. I still begin each job with a page or two of drills, and basic stroke practice.

So there you have it, handwriting and calligraphy are two very different things. You can write amazing calligraphy with terrible handwriting or vice versa. I’m grateful for my calligraphy journeys so far and can’t wait to see what the coming years will bring as my skills continue to improve.

If you’ve ever thought about learning calligraphy, here are some of my favorite calligraphers and hand letterers. Many of them have online courses or books with great ideas for practice, and all of them are gifted artists who inspire me to continue on my journey! I hope one day a calligrapher new in his/her journey will have LetterJess on their inspiration list.

Laura Hooper Calligraphy (@lhcalligraphy)

Maghon Taylor (All She Wrote Notes) (@allshewrotenotes)

Crooked Calligraphy (Calligraphy with a twist of sass) (@crookedcalligraphy)

Kristen Henderson Calligraphy (@kristenhendersoncalligraphy)

Calligraphy by Carole (wrote my beautiful wedding invitations!) (@calligraphybycarole)

LeenMachine Calligraphy (@leenmachinecalligraphy)

Suz Cunningham (@SuzCunningham)

2019 Beauty Find Favorites

First things first: I’m not a Beauty Expert. That said, I am always game to try something I hear someone raving about in hopes it’ll become my new favorite thing. Isn’t it the greatest feeling when you’re mid-container of something new and love it so much you know you’ll get another one. You’ve found a ‘holy grail’ beauty product! Look at you!

In all seriousness, because I’m someone who does like to experiment with new things, the greatest complement I can pay a product or gadget is to purchase it again. There were a couple of things I tried for the first time in 2019 that have become staples in my regimen so I thought I’d share those with you too.

Dickinson’s Witch Hazel

You read that right. One of my favorite finds in 2019 was a simple witch hazel hydrating toner made by Dickinson’s. While we lived in DC, I had the pleasure of meeting Ariel Lewis, a talented makeup artist who serves clients in the Baltimore/DC Metro area. Her Instagram Tuesday tutorials featured this product more than once, and it just so happened that I noticed a bottle of it in the drug store just as I was running out of another toner I’d been using. I grabbed a bottle and never looked back. This is the gold standard of all toners I’ve used. It has some hyularonic acid and moisturizes my skin while it’s picking up the last bits of makeup or dirt left on my skin after cleansing. If you know me, you know I’m a sucker for anything with a rose scent, so I love that element as well. At less than $6 per bottle (16 oz) I dare you to find a better toner for the money. I’m on my 3rd bottle now, and I know I’ll keep going back for more. Thank you to Ariel for this recommendation! You can find this toner at most drug stores or by clicking here for the Amazon listing.

Beauty Counter Cleansing Balm

Let’s be honest. I’ve tried a lot of cleansers in my time. Soaps, gels, foaming gels, creams- honestly, I think I’ve even tried a powder cleanser! I grabbed this Lotus Glow Cleansing balm during my sister-in-law’s Beauty Counter party and fell in love with it. (The original balm was reformulated this year, and I love it even more!) I can’t tell you I’m 100% on the ‘clean beauty only” train, although I am trying to pay more attention to the number of chemicals and toxins I put on and in my body. That said, I find I’ve had great success using this balm to remove makeup from my skin without having a dry feeling after. And even though I just talked about my new favorite toner, I find there is less left on my skin when I wash it with this cleansing balm than other cleansers. My one knock on it is that I don’t think there’s a travel size, and anytime I fly I have to take something else with me. (Come on, Beauty Counter! Give us some travel sizes!) I know some folks have an automatic distrust of companies like Beauty Counter who are multi-level marketing platforms, but I am happy when I find a product I truly love that helps a friend or family member earn extra income for whatever reason. If you’re looking for someone who can help you with Beauty Counter, I’m sure there are tons of folks around who are consultants. (I think that’s what they’re referred to as with Beauty Counter.) I’ve ordered from Jennifer Stockton, Chelsi Krause and Katherine White and I know they would all love to help you as well!) This jar of cleansing balm runs $72 and lasted me several months.

Bio Ionic Long Barrel Curling Iron

When I moved to Myrtle Beach I had to find another hairstylist, and if you’ve ever had to start over with someone then you know how intimidating that can be. I met Danielle at Blush Beauty Bar and was happy to quickly find someone who cut and colored my hair really well. The best part? Every time I leave the salon I want to go somewhere because my hair always looks and feels fabulous. After drying my hair once I noticed she was using a curling iron I’d never seen before, and that’s when she told me about this little baby. This curling iron features a super long barrel, which is something I’d equate to a heated steering wheel in a car. You never think it’s that big of a deal, and definitely not something worth spending the extra money on- but then on a cold day you find yourself driving a car that has one and your life is never the same. Okay- maybe that’s a stretch, but I ordered myself one of these curling irons and absolutely adore it. Even after I chopped my hair off earlier this year, I find the longer barrel helps make the curls less uniform (if that makes any sense) and I don’t have to keep re-winding my hair as I go. It’s a bit of a splurge at $140 on Amazon, but the heat setting options, light weight, and ion heat made it money well spent in my book. If you’re on the market for a new hair tool, I highly recommend this one! You can find the listing for the one I use here on Amazon.